We Didn't Make it Very Far

Less than a hundred miles offshore, our first overnight of the four-day (and -night!) sail to the Windward Passage, we experienced unexpectedly bad weather. We entered a trough (which was predicted, with only a passing short squall) that lasted for hours. We had a single reef in our main and about half jib up, and were still sailing at seven knots. The wind was well forward of the beam (much more north-east than east), and the motion on the boat was very confused. After midnight, I made my way forward and put a second reef in the main and rolled up more jib to slow us down some.

About 3 a.m., I was on watch, with my harness and tether on, Larry asleep below decks. A rogue wave hit us broadside, coming up and over the bimini, slamming me against the cockpit lifelines (thank goodness we had installed stainless steel all around the cockpit!). Of course these things never happen during the day. We were hit with such force that the gears on our self-steering unmeshed and suddenly I was steering by hand, buffeted by beam-to waves. Larry was up and leaning over to fix the self-steering. After an hour of this, we determined we couldn't fix it underway and made the decision to turn back.

I got a couple of hours sleep and came up to a steel-grey sky, horizontally-sluicing rain, and perhaps 25 knots of wind, beating into it. We were trying to make it back to Curacao but it was obvious from our track that we wouldn't be able to, that we were headed for Aruba.

Our poor head sail

Once we were able to take stock of the damage and count our bruises and scrapes, we were grateful neither of us was injured badly. Our poor headsail, one of the primary "engines" of our sailboat, was damaged. The blue sun cover was in shreds, and one of the control lines (known as the leech line) was dangling off the trailing edge of the sail. Oh my!






So - here we find ourselves in Aruba, a much windier island to the west of Curacao. We have been seeking a sailmaker to repair our jib, and finally found one who will take a look at it.

Hotel area in the north of the island

Aruba is a very tourist-oriented island, much more so than Curacao. Cruise ships dock every day, and hotels make the island look very much like the coast of south Florida. Marine services for the small boat sailor like ourselves are few and far between.

But - this is where we find ourselves, so we will pursue fixing the boat here!

View from the stern of our boat

We are at the Renaissance Marina, in a protected man-made cove, just past the cruise ship docks. It is interesting to watch the cruise ships come in, with the pilot boats handling their massive dock lines.